I have always questioned the necessity and ideologies of White Power groups. The people who join these types of groups seem to think that because there are non-white organizations that represent the interests of non-white people, there should also be groups that advocate for the interests of white people. I don’t understand this logic. There already exist groups that advocate for white people: government, business, real estate companies, financial institutions, the media, etc. The list goes on and on. The power structure of the entire world is created by white people for white people. In the areas of business, government, science, finances and many other areas, people of European ancestry and/or appearance continue to dominate these spheres of power. In North America and many Latin American countries, the power structure is represented by people who look as if their ancestors are from Western Europe. Whiteness continues to be the standard of beauty, power, middle-class status and even humanity. So what is the White Power movement really about?

It appears that some white people actually believe that modest gains achieved by minority groups are a threat to white supremacy. There were the American Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s and 1970s that many seem to believe improved the lives of all African-Americans. But realistically, while these movements improved the lives of many individual black people, 40 years later, the overall situation of African-Americans as a group has not changed. Black children still attend inferior schools, black wealth is about one-tenth the wealth of whites, and reports still prove that discrimination, racism and underrepresentation affect the lives of African-Americans. OK, a black man is the president of the most powerful country in the world, but he too is an individual; an individual who must protect the interest of a capitalist system that is maintained and operated by white people. African-Americans are not the owners of any major enterprise that would cause the world to collapse. Afro-Brazilians are in a similar position as a whole and there are far fewer individual Afro-Brazilians that have some type power or influence in Brazil.

The Civil Rights, Black Power (America) and Unified Black (Brasil) Movements were and are social movements that arose as a response to racist systems to secure the rights of full citizenship for populations that were and are systematically denied these rights. Since the colonization of the Americas, what rights and representation have been systematically denied from whites as a group and were based on the question of race? If anything, racial privilege has guaranteed white rights.

Affirmative Action policies and the rise of Barack Obama are being blamed for the rise in insecurity, outrage and acts of violence by white supremacists in the United States. There is also a fear of the inevitable majority status of non-whites in the United States within the next 40 years. In Brazil, affirmative action policies initiated at the beginning of the 21st century have sparked heated debates about race in a country that has always denied the existence of racism and where a dialogue and debate about the issue of race has only recently begun. Affirmative action policies in the United States have existed for four decades and it was only recently that protests against these policies have led to the end of such programs in some institutions of higher learning. In Brazil, affirmative action has lasted less than a decade and already there have been actions to reverse these policies.

Let me make one point. Screams of black power and white power are not the same thing. Black power is a declaration that black people want to have some control over their own destiny and a future for their children in societies where they have been denied access. Although there have been a few black groups that could be described as racist, two of Black Power’s most vocal advocates, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X at the end of his life, preached solidarity with other groups to achieve an end to inequality and racial oppression. White Power groups, on the other hand, usually preach white superiority, racial purity and the elimination of other racial groups. And there is one fact that ultimately makes screams of White Power sound ridiculous: White people already have the power. And this is not meant to initiate any racial antagonism; it’s a simple fact.